New patient rating system to be introduced

25th May 2012The government has unveiled a new NHS patient rating system in a bid to drive up standards of nursing care in England.

Patients will be asked from next April if they would recommend the hospital they were treated in to their family and friends, with their views made public.

The move follows concerns about staff levels in recent months at a time that the number of nurses in the NHS fell by 1% (3,500).

The new rating system is the first recommendation the government has accepted from its Nursing Quality Care Forum, though it has made no commitment to introduce other recommendations at this stage, including a call to review staffing levels.

The move has been welcomed by forum chairwoman Sally Brearley and Royal College of Nursing general secretary Peter Carter who said: “This report echoes what the RCN has been saying about the importance of staffing levels and skill mix. In these times of financial constraint we must ensure that the level of nursing care is sufficient across all settings.”

Prime Minister David Cameron said the move was another step in ensuring that patients get “the best care they possibly can” from the NHS.

However, shadow health secretary Andy Burnham said the announcement was a good move but no substitute for "getting a grip on what matters to patients".

“David Cameron now wants to hear the views of patients, but it's a shame he wouldn't listen to them when they were pleading with him in their thousands to drop his bitterly contested NHS re-organisation,” he added.